Most of us probably have at least a vague history-class recollection that Winston Churchill was the man who identified an “iron curtain” separating western Europe from Communist-dominated eastern Europe after World War II.
Some of us might even remember from the history textbook that Churchill delivered that memorable description of the East-West divide during a speech in Fulton, Missouri, in 1946. Why little Fulton? That’s one question answered in Philip White’s Our Supreme Task: How Winston Churchill’s Iron Curtain Speech Defined the Cold War Alliance.
White’s enjoyable book also reminds us how Churchill’s words influenced future relations among the Allies who won World War II. Nine months after the speech, officially titled “The Sinews of Peace,” Churchill wrote to a colleague: “Fulton still holds its own!”
Indeed, Fulton would continue to hold its own for the rest of his life and career, and for the duration of the Cold War. In the short term, “The Sinews of Peace” solidified the thoughts and actions of the Attlee and Truman governments on Russia and transatlantic relations, directed the remainder of Churchill’s political efforts, and created the most powerful visual image of the division between the democratic, capitalist West and the totalitarian, Communist East. “The Sinews of Peace” also rhetorically paved the way for the Truman Doctrine and the massive injection of American aid to Europe encapsulated in the Marshall Plan, both conceived in 1947.
Of course there were significant other economic and political factors in play. … But it was Churchill’s message in Missouri that brought their collective opinions to a global audience and kick-started new policy initiatives. As Truman told Churchill in October 1947, the month after the formation of the Cominform (the agency that coordinated international Communist policy with guidance from Moscow), and with Soviet puppet rulers entrenched in Hungary and on the verge of claiming Czechoslovakia: “[Y]our Fulton … speech becomes more nearly a prophecy every day.”
